


Her Mind Will Burn, And She Will Die

by Deriliarch



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, DoctorDonna, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 15:38:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15173879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deriliarch/pseuds/Deriliarch
Summary: The Metacrisis DoctorDonna calls up one day and wants to speak to Donna. The Doctor doesn't know what to tell him---no, he knows what he needs to tell him. He just doesn't want to.





	Her Mind Will Burn, And She Will Die

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this--jeez, about 5 years ago, now and never had anywhere to put it. So, I'm putting it here.

“Martha, this is possibly the worst time you could call, I’m in the middle of stabilizing the TARDIS’ neural core; something’s gone wonky with the plumbing and not wrong as in a cold wash when the loo flushes, wrong as in the tub keeps trying to vomit badgers, so if you could—!”

  
“Hullo, there! Expecting someone else?”

  
The Doctor blinked and slowly straightened, removing his foot from the TARDIS’ console and releasing the lever he had been wrestling. “Oh.” He searched for words, shoving a hand in his pocket. “Oh.”

  
“Oh?”

  
“Is there an echo?”

  
“Cheeky,” the voice held a grin.

  
“Is this really what I sound like over the phone?”

  
“Apparently,” The part human Doctor sounded smug.

  
“Blimey.”

  
Silence crept over the line, strange and alien and the Doctor grimaced. He hated phones, no faces to read, no minds to touch, limited as humans were; still it was something. Over the line, the silences could mean any number of things and it allowed his vast imagination to start churning in anxiety. “Is Rose alright?”

  
“What? Oh, yeah, yeah! No, she’s brilliant! Away at a conference at the moment; got the Hub to myself. “

  
Again, they didn’t speak for a while until the Doctor ventured, “Erm…not to seem rude or anything but…is there a reason you called? Badgers and all….”

  
“Right! Yes, I wanted to try something. The TARDIS is reading the signal well, yeah? Loud and clear?”

  
Trotting about, he flipped a few switches and twiddled a few fiddly things until she became fed up with him and hummed assent at the edges of his awareness, putting on a great blinking light for good measure. “Er, yup. Clear as the cloister bell—though, I’d appreciate if you didn’t make that happen. Why?”

  
“Here, old girl, getting this?”

  
Something deep in the TARDIS seemed to smile and stretch, snapping into place with a buzz of electricity. “Oi!”

  
With a start, the Doctor whirled to find…well, _him_ in a suit jacket, jeans and trainers, grinning and standing next to the console. His form was wavering slightly and he was semi-transparent and shadowless. “Universal roaming paired with good old huon energy and an innate maternal-genetic link. Gotta love the TARDIS!”

  
Staring between the human-metacrisis Doctor and his phone, he could only stammer, “Bu—what? What?” as the TARDIS thrummed happily at the praise. “How did you--?”

  
“The bit of TARDIS you left us? Yeah, a bit more generous than you’d planned for, innit? We got the _daughter_ of this TARDIS, ensuring even the faintest motherly psychic link they’ve got, even across universes, because she remembers. Don’t you, dear?” he looked around the control room gleefully. “And boring old Torchwood, surrounded by alien technology, what else was I gonna do? Let you run off?”

  
“That was the general plan,” the Doctor muttered, scruffing the back of his hair as he carefully set the open phone on the console. “So…you’re not here, but a projection? Hologram?”

  
The duplicate’s face took on a grim cast and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. Just like with Rose. Projecting through micro-fissures in the universe’s shell, bound to be left by one accident or another. Mostly harmless.” Then, his face brightened. “That’s Earth, then, isn’t it? Mostly harmless.”

  
“Ah, Adams had it right. But you’re timeline isn’t much more forward than ours, how are you getting this power? The kind of energy you would need—generators like that won’t be around for another, ooo, 150 years.” The Doctor furrowed his brow. “You’re not…I dunno…draining all of Cardiff’s power, are you? That’d be a bit inconsiderate, I ‘d think.”

  
The part human tilted his head back and laughed before shaking his head, “No no no no, Jackie’d have my head. Her stories are on at this time. Nah, found a nearby constellation, tracked a power source. I’m burning up a sun just to say hello.”

  
The Time Lord felt his mouth tighten as his hands clenched in his pockets. _It was alright for him, the darkest part of his mind hissed, he can make a joke like that because he had her. That memory was a distant ache, a healed scar. He didn’t have to see it in his dreams and wonder what he could have done differently. How he could have saved her. Saved them both._ Outwardly, he forced a smile as the TARDIS coiled under his thoughts, concerned. “I see.”

  
The holograms grin faded a bit, deterred, before he shook himself and looked around, leaning this way and that. “So, how are things? Been doing much? Well, we’re always doing things. All the time, never really stop. Aaaaanyhow! How’s Donna? Where is she, by the way, I can’t hear her talking which, frankly, scares me—what?” he stopped, dread seeping into his words as he stopped wiggling about. “What’s happened?”

  
Silently, the Doctor cursed himself, trying to ease the rigidity in his shoulders and stop looking like his clone had just struck him. “Erm….”

  
“What.”

  
“Doctor—what do people call you, there? I imagine Rose wouldn’t care any which way but ‘the Doctor’ doesn’t tend to satisfy people when you have to stick around.” He tried to unclench his jaw, mouth going dry as his stomach churned. Oh Gallifrey, he didn’t want to do this, not now, he didn’t care how long it had been, it was too soon, it was always too soon. The TARDIS wended through his mind like a cat, trying to get attention but it merely made him feel like he was going to trip and fall headlong into some dark bramble of memory he would have to fight to escape. He pushed her away, gently.

  
“John Smith—what else?— now; _what’s. Happened. To Donna_.” He could see the panic blooming in his eyes, hands out of his pockets and held, unconsciously at the ready at his sides.

  
The Doctor closed his eyes, swallowing several times as he tried to work thoughts and words around his burning throat, burning memories. _Her mind will burn and she will die—_ “She’s fine. She’s alive.”

  
“Doctor, that’s not an answer, you said that for Rose and you were not alright. We were so very not alright with her just being ‘alive’—“ _she’s alive now, she’s with you, why are you mentioning that, you have a life with her, she’s alive with you_ —“now tell me. Where. Is. Donna. Noble?!”

  
“She’s gone!” he snarled, eyes flying open. “She’s gone back home because you came and you shared memories and you were fine, weren’t you?! You were built to handle a Time Lord’s consciousness, but she couldn’t, she was human. She was brilliant, but she was only human.” His outburst had petered into a quavering whisper as John Smith stared, stunned. “She couldn’t…she knew _everything_ and it was killing her and after all we’ve….” He had to turn away, he couldn’t look at him anymore, the shock of it all flooding his face. He wrapped his hands around the lip of the TARDIS’ control panel, clinging like it was a cliff.

  
There was that damnable silence again, just yawning and stretching, seeming to echo with wide, empty feelings until the jeering chorus filled his head; _binary binary binary binary binary binary_ —“I had to take it away.” He said flatly. “All of it. Everything. I killed Donna. I killed the Donna that saved Caecilius and his family, I killed the Donna that cared about the Ood, I killed the Donna that knew Jenny—” his voice caught and he heard the clone’s breath do the same behind him. “So Donna’s alive. But not my Donna.”

  
“Our Donna.”

  
He turned to see John, eyes burning with anger and tears, quivering. “ _Our_ Donna. I’m the DoctorDonna, she’s a part of me and you didn’t see fit to tell me anything? To let me say _goodbye_?! The whole time on the Crucible, when you realized what was going on, you didn’t tell me?! When we were piloting the TARDIS, when she knew all that, you didn’t tell me I was never going to see her as her again?!” his voice steadily rose until the walls rang with his accusations. The TARDIS protested that such rage was being reflected off her insides.

  
“I didn’t know,” it sounded more like a plea than a defense. “I hoped…I knew it wasn’t supposed to work but I hoped that she….Once you destroyed the Daleks, once you made that decision, I knew where you were going to go. Where I would want to go, but Donna…she was going to stay with me. She was going to stay with me forever.”

  
They stared at one another, one insubstantial and jolting with static every so often, the other motionless and subdued. “…I’m sorry,” John murmured, finally looking away. “I know she was. I could never have done that. It’s just,” suddenly, he took a step forward, anguish in his face. “The last time, the last time I saw her, you both just slipped way. I didn’t see, I couldn’t say goodbye.”

  
The memory brought a fresh twist in his gut as he remembered seeing what he could have had, had fate been kinder. He saw himself having a life with Rose; one he couldn’t participate in. He could offer no explanation. “Did you know then? What you had to….” The part-human Doctor trailed off, unable to say it. “Did you know when you walked away?”

  
It was hard to remember, honestly, all that sorrow melded together; _Sarah Jane has got Luke and Martha has that Tom Milligan, Jack has his team, he was taking Rose back, Davros had been about to destroy everything, he knew a part of him could still commit genocide, the TARDIS missed the pilots already, Davros had chosen to die rather than be saved by him, it was the Master all over again. Rose was leaving, Rose was choosing him, the other him, she would be happy, there was something wrong with the DoctorDonna, it wasn’t supposed to happen, it couldn’t happen, it couldn’t exist_ —“Yes.”

  
“And you still left.”

  
“Yes.”

  
John merely stared at him. He didn’t need to ask. He knew why; he was him. He knew, in the back of his mind. He would have stopped him, Donna and him would have stalled and she would have died. Painfully. In front of the both of them. Some things are worse than missed goodbyes. “Are you ever going to visit us again, spaceman?”

  
The Doctor studied his face, his clothes, the differences in his stance and his face. He was happy. He was making new memories and he had Rose, a human future and a human job and a growing TARDIS. Somewhere in his world, Donna Noble was sitting at an office, working as a temp. Or maybe in that reality, she was the boss. She ran the company and set things straight; somewhere, Donna Noble knew how brilliant she was. Rose would come back, Jackie would raise Tony, Torchwood would save the world and life would go on.

  
“No.”


End file.
